Zonneveld raises interesting Pogacar-Evenepoel question after World Championship time trial: "And then you also have Van der Poel"

Let's start with Evenepoel's home country, being (of course) Belgium. Sporza commentators José De Cauwer and Renaat Schotte lacked compliments for the 24-year-old Fleming's performance. "Especially that Remco pulled himself out of the dip after the Olympics and could recharge himself to do this. Awesome," said de Cauwer.

"Old school without a power meter, that makes it all the more beautiful," De Cauwer also stated, referring to the fact that Evenepoel finished his time trial without a power meter. And what about the world record of world time trial titles (four)? "I think Evenepoel is already much further along than Fabian Cancellara and Tony Martin at that age. In other words, he still has time," said a laudatory De Cauwer.

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Looking at the newspapers, we understandably see fantastic headlines popping up everywhere. Take La Gazzetta dello Sport, the leading sports newspaper in Italy. "Once again, Remco, once again the phenomenal Fleming who extended his 2023 world title on the banks of Lake Zurich," it sounded there. "There seems to be no end to the golden season of Evenepoel, who, at the age of 24, has already managed to win the World Road Championship, the World Time Trial Championship, the gold double at the Olympics, overall victory in the Vuelta and twice Liège-Bastogne-Liège."

"Belgian Remco Evenepoel is building an impressive string of successes in the time trial," wrote the Dutch daily newspaper De Volkskrant. "He became world champion in Zurich on Sunday for the second time. A lot of stress accompanied that, but in the end, it all didn't bother him. He is establishing an impressive series in this discipline."

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It raises the question in the podcast In het Wiel: what if Evenepoel also takes another world title in the road race on Sunday? With that performance, could he consider his season even better than Tadej Pogacar, who won both the Giro d'Italia and Tour de France? What if Evenepoel becomes the world champion? "Then he will be world champion time trial and road and Olympic champion time trial and on the road," cycling journalist Thijs Zonneveld concluded defiantly. "Would you rather become world and Olympic champion twice or win the Giro and Tour in one year? That's incredible, isn't it? And then you also have Mathieu van der Poel, who won the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix as a world champion..."

Zonneveld and Hidde van Warmerdam agreed to think about it for a day, so they returned to it in a subsequent episode on Monday night. "I would choose Pogacar's successes after all," Van Warmerdam said firmly. "The Giro-Tour double is nicer because winning the two in the current cycling era is more interesting. A slightly more extraordinary achievement."

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Zonneveld hesitates. "The way does matter, with all those stages Pogacar won." But, says Van Warmerdam, "That supremacy in both races also made it boring, whereas you have much less of that in one-day races like the Games and the World Championships." Zonneveld's final conclusion: "Pogacar was unbeatable this year; he rode Evenepoel out of his wheel at least four times in the Tour. Evenepoel was nowhere unbeatable, only in the most important tournaments."

Both men's answers eventually turn completely different when a third superstar is added to the story. "What if Mathieu van der Poel becomes world champion on Sunday, having won the Ronde, Roubaix, and the World Championship, plus the Cyclocross World Championship as well?" Van Warmerdam then clarifies, "Yes, I would choose that."